Political Quotes

“I wanted to get back to something the gentleman from Vermont mentioned, when he said that Wall Street was all in favor of NAFTA and Wall Street was all in favor of the bailout. In fact, former U.S. Trade Representative, Ms. Carla Hills, who used to come regularly up to Congress and tell us what a great deal NAFTA was, has written an article for the Washington Post saying we have to bail out these poor people. It was funny that just 11/2 years ago, when Ms. Hills came before the Merchant Marine Committee and I brought to her attention that a lot of shrimpers in the gulf coast, a lot of people in the garment plants would probably lose their jobs as a result of NAFTA, she said, "that is economic Darwinism. You just have to have some people who are going to suffer when things like this happen, but it is for the benefit of everybody that this happens." Would someone explain the wisdom to me why it is OK to let somebody who makes $5.50 an hour working at a sewing machine all day lose their job, but when some Wall Street investor loses a couple of bucks on his investments down in Mexico, or maybe a lot more than a couple bucks, that it suddenly becomes the responsibility of the working people of this country, the very same working people that you may have put out of work to bail them out, to go on the line and cosign that loan?”